Sunday, December 30, 2012

eleven books, seven movies and one crappy, love-filled year

I just opened the beat-up little notebook where I write down
all the movies I see, to ponder what might make my Best of 2012 list. Instead I
flipped to a page where I’d written “ovary removal timeline.” So that tells you
most of what you need to know about my 2012.

That said, surgery (on the boobs—the ovaries will have to be
a New Year’s resolution) went really well. As I’ve been telling anyone who asks
how I’m doing, the same genes that gave me cancer and anxiety also gave me
flexible pectoral muscles. So while I feared weeks of needing help wiping my
ass, the pain was more along the lines of a really rough work-out at the gym,
and I found myself saving my Percocet for when I had cramps a few days later.
(No more of that once the ovaries are out—woo-hoo?)

Also, and more importantly, four different tests to look for
lymph node metastasis came back negative. The cancer appears to be confined to
one giant-ass tumor—I’m looking for a point of comparison size-wise, but I refuse to
choose a fruit, because all the pregnancy websites tell you when your fetus is
the size of a blueberry, a lime, etc., and the metaphoric implications of what
grew inside me instead are already too painful.

So we’ll call it a summer squash, which I hate. Or an
iPhone. Or a fist and a half. It was unnervingly big, although they say size
doesn’t matter…too much. It was something that could have only hidden in my or
Christina Hendricks’ boobs.

I'm sure my tumor would look all cool and arty posed on an antique bench too.

But it’s no longer in me. So it’s possible that I no longer
have cancer, and that’s the story I’m going to stick with, although soon I’ll
begin six rounds of chemo to make sure. And I might have to do radiation to
make extra sure. Those things are daunting, but I’m trying to think of them as just
really grueling errands.

People say losing your breasts is tragic, and I felt fully
prepared to be freaked out by my temporarily nipple-less body, but so far I’m
not. I’m a little wistful when I think about the old ones, but it’s a general
wistfulness for a (slightly) more innocent time. I find my boobs-in-progress tidy
and interesting and full of possibility.

People (or at least a recent episode of Modern Family, to which AK and I gave the finger) say that getting
pregnant is easy and raising kids is the hard part.

I think sometimes people are wrong. I’m not saying raising
kids is easy. But since I’ve spent the past few years wrestling with why
supposedly-easy things are sometimes so hard for me, I’m going to take solace
when hard things occasionally turn out easy(ish). Maybe chemo will be one of
them?

And although the past week and a half has been a little
heavier on TLC’s Freaky Eaters than I
would have liked, and a little lighter on editing my novel and watching classic
films, I’m still taking solace in books and movies. Here are my favorites—not
necessarily the “best,” but the ones that spoke to me the most. They, and a few
wonderful people, got me through 2012.

This cover is pretty great. The book is all about shadows and doubling.